The photographs in Defiant to the Last have been around for more than 50 years, and have been misinterpreted by everyone. I first encountered them in Michi Weglyn's seminal book Years of Infamy, published in 1976. The photo credit read, intriguingly, "Smuggled photos courtesy of Wayne M. Collins." (Wayne Mortimer Collins, then a Northern California ACLU attorney, was a fierce fighter for Japanese Americans and Japanese Latin Americans during the camps and after to regain their citizenship.) Some of the photos appear in my documentary Rabbit in the Moon, completed in 1999. At that time, the photographer was unknown. The events being documented were a mystery. What appeared as submission by the inmates was, in fact, a hidden story about protest and resistance to the illegal, violent, unconstitutional actions by the US government.

Eventually, the son of the photographer, John Ross (born at Tule Lake), revealed that the photographer was his late father, Robert Ross, who worked for the War Relocation Authority. Robert Ross, son of missionaries, had lived in Japan, spoke Japanese, and was sympathetic to our plight. In 1945, ACLU lawyer Wayne Collins was sent a second time to Tule Lake to investigate the existence of a second stockade and became aware of the Renunciation Act and the men being held and brutalized in the jail. Here's where the story gets a bit murky. According to John Ross, his father made prints of these photos and left them on a table for "someone" to take. I assume that the "someone" was Wayne Collins. This accounts for the intriguing photo credit in Michi Weglyn's book.

Piecing together the captions and dates on the backs of these photographs with government memos, reports, and a survivor interview, the story of resistance by the inmates emerged. Like a graphic novel, I was able to visually reconstruct one of the most chaotic and insidious times at the Tule Lake Segregation Center.

Several mysteries have been solved: the purpose of the jail, the identity of the photographer, and a true account of what was happening at the infamous, high security Tule Lake Segregation Center.

— Emiko Omori, Director of Defiant to the Last